Irish multiple sclerosis sufferer Marie Fleming has died

Full Segment: An intense moral debate surrounds the issue of whether to legalize the choice to end your own life. But the growing sense that prolonged pain has no moral worth is boosting the case for euthanasia. What dangers await?

on.aol.com

Marie Fleming was the Irish multiple sclerosis (MS) sufferer who fought her way through the legalities for her partner, Tom Curran, to be able to assist her suicide and Friday morning has just brought news of her death.

Fleming had argued that the ban on assisted suicide breached her constitutional rights and discriminated against her as a disabled person.

Her disease had progressed to the point where she was nearly unable to do anything for herself, meaning that she was physically unable to end her own life, and she was afraid Mr. Curran would be prosecuted were he to help her.

She lost the battle with the supreme court in the Irish state just this April when they ruled there was nothing in their Constitution that would grant the right for Mr. Curran to assist her in killing herself and he had said he didn’t understand their ruling as “that is legally available to someone who is able bodied and how that is not discriminatory under the Constitution.”

The former University College Dublin lecturer had suffered from MS for 24 years and had been in such pain that she had reported that she felt she had hit her limit, feeling it “in every joint of her body.”

After the ruling, she and her family had returned home, thinking they would study the court’s judgment before deciding an appeal to European courts but Curran had said Marie was very ill and recovering slowly from a bad chest infection.

She’d also been drained from the incredible fight she’d put up with the High Courts, he’d said in April; so it isn’t a surprise that Ms. Fleming had died in her sleep just a few hours ago.

Mr. Curran told the Irish news RTÉ that she had worsened in the past two weeks; that she had the "peaceful death in her own home” and that he would continue the fight on her behalf.

Their supreme courts had ruled the ban on assisted suicide did not discriminate unfairly against her and was not compatible with the European Convention on Human Rights but Mr. Curran is campaigning to change that as he knows it would be what she would want.

MS World ~ “We've come together from around the world to help each other cope with the challenges of living with Multiple Sclerosis.”

Patients like Me ~ “Our Promise PatientsLikeMe is committed to putting patients first. We do this by providing a better, more effective way for you to share your real-world health experiences in order to help yourself, other patients like you and organizations that focus on your conditions.”

Med Help, Multiple Sclerosis ~ “Today, MedHelp empowers over 12 million people each month to take control over their health and find answers to their medical questions. MedHelp, a privately-funded company, has over 16 years of accumulated information from doctors and other patients across hundreds of conditions. In addition, MedHelp has long-standing partnerships with the top medical institutions such as the Cleveland Clinic, National Jewish, Partners Health, and Mount Sinai. MedHelp's audience, archives, and partnerships make it a unique health destination on the Internet.”

Share this article

Lori Friend is a single mother of three who was informed of her Multiple Sclerosis in 2006. She has written about the various new scientific reviews and findings in a website she created in 2008 and is currently taking Gilenya in the hopes it will help with her fight. Having done I.V. solumendrol countless times, chemotherapy, Copaxone and Rebif along with years of research, she knows she has good working knowledge of MS and enjoys helping others to see how far researchers have come along in the fight.

Missy Miller is the mother of 14-year-old Oliver. He has a brain stem injury that causes him to have hundreds of seizures a day. Certain strains of marijuana have received attention for curbing seizures in children.